s, it is true, proclaim them free; but prejudices, more
powerful than any laws, deny them the privileges of freemen.
They occupy a middle station between the free white population
and the slaves of the United States, and the tendency of their
habits is to corrupt both.' * * * 'That the free colored
population of our country is a great and constantly increasing
evil must be readily acknowledged. Averse to labor, with no
incentives to industry or motives to self-respect, they maintain
a precarious existence by petty thefts and plunder, themselves,
or by inciting our domestics, not free, to rob their owners to
supply their wants.' * * * 'If there is in the whole world, a
more wretched class of human beings than the free people of
color in this country, I do not know where they are to be found.
They have no home, no country, no kindred, no friends. They are
lazy and indolent, because they have no motives to prompt them
to be industrious. They are in general destitute of principle,
because they have nothing to stimulate them to honorable and
praise-worthy conduct. Let them be maltreated ever so much, the
law gives them no redress unless some white person happens to be
present, to be a witness in the case. If they acquire property,
they hold it by the courtesy of every vagabond in the country;
and sooner or later, are sure to have it filched from
them.'--[Idem, vol. vi. pp. 12, 135, 228.]

'The existence, within the very bosom of our country, of an
anomalous race of beings, THE MOST DEBASED UPON EARTH, who
neither enjoy the blessings of freedom, nor are yet in the bonds
of slavery, is a great national evil, which every friend of his
country most deeply deplores.... Tax your utmost powers of
imagination, and you cannot conceive one motive to honorable
effort, which can animate the bosom, or give impulse to the
conduct of a free black in this country. Let him toil from youth
to age in the honorable pursuit of wisdom--let him store his
mind with the most valuable researches of science and
literature--and let him add to a highly gifted and cultivated
intellect, a piety pure, undefiled, and "unspotted from the
world"--it is all nothing: he would not be received into the
very lowest walks of society. If we were constrained to admire
so uncommon a being, our very admiration would ming